Acer capestre- field or hedge maple - refinement techniques

When your objective is to refine and ramify your field maple and knowing that field maple doesn’t typically lend itself to fine ramification – my logic would be to give it every chance you can to achieve this.

Akadama is quite unique in its ability to finely ramify root systems, due to roots being able to penetrate the particles and bifurcate. Ramification in the branches is said to mirror the ramification in the roots, to an extent.

I’m not suggesting for every tree in your collection of course :laughing: and I agree about meriting the cost on trees in development. You’d possibly only need a litre for this Acer in refinement at next repot. Your Campestre is doing so well so far, it feels odd for me to offer advice for it especially as I’ve not had any tree in training as long as you have. But, from what I’ve seen Akadama do to roots on some of my trees, and what I believe from the advice around me (including Mirai Live) I’d consider Akadama in your soil mix, if at all possible.

About the freeze-thaw and it breaking down: Marius from IBUKI in Poland offers “fired Akadama”. It’s fired to a certain temperature which allegedly keeps its favourable properties yet holds its form better than standard Akadama (after much experimentation and research on their part to ascertain that, I gather). So far it’s not available as singles but is available as a 60/40 mix with pumice. His prices for other soil mixes or normal Akadama are decent too. Especially if you are ordering a few bags at once or sharing an order with someone to spread the shipping cost.

https://ibuki-shop.com/kategoria-produktu/sieved-substrates/fired-akadama-mix/

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@Ralph interesting thoughts. I’m still musing on this topic. I hear how Ryan speaks of it, and much of his reasoning is sound, but I still have questions.
I am not sure anyone has solid evidence that ramification of roots is directly correlated with ability to ramify twigs, and certainly I’m yet to hear an explanation of the causative mechanism. Beyond that, if there is good evidence, it seems like the effect is likely to be of a much lower order of effect than techniques such as fertilisation, pruning timing, root pruning, etc.
If I had sufficient financial resources I might run a test… you would need to start with several clones (layers or cuttings) of the same size and develop some in a moller based mix, some in an akadama mix of the same relative proportions and particle size, and some in pure akedama. You would then need to use the same container, same garden position, standardise the potting timings and techniques and the development techniques.
It’s a realisable project, but it needs time, space, and decent advanced clonal material over a five year period or so.
In short, my reluctance is that I could switch towards Akedama with my tree in refinement, but with the change of pot and progression of techniques I would never be sure what the effect had been.

@Michael_P yes don’t worry I didn’t think you were damning campestre either :slightly_smiling_face:. There’s a lot of love for Campestre in this thread. :laughing: And for a guy working with pseudoplatanus and platanoides you’re clearly not shy of a long internode and species which don’t typically lend themselves to fine ramification.

That’s valuable information about campestre, thanks for sharing. As you and @Silva_Naturalis are saying: don’t know how much the variation within a species comes into play. Seems hard to imagine weakening a campestre from the wild-collected (in South-England) handful in my collection. Its vigour is impressive but those tips from Patrice Bongrand are definitely something to be aware of.

I was planning on attending the 2020 French national exhibition on 23rd/24th of May. I even booked my Eurostar tickets before it all kicked off with the virus. We’ll see how things pan out towards May. I met and had a good chat to Michel Brohet at the Swindon show about his naturalistic hornbeam he was displaying there. If I understood correctly he’s doing a talk at the exhibition that weekend.

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I definitely understand your angle and we’re in agreement that it’s certainly lower order than those other things you mentioned. And of course, it’s assuming all those techniques and practices are carrited out so it’s an “as well as”, rather than “instead of”. But short of doing the experiments (which is more costly and time-consuming than just using Akadama on refined trees) which might rule it out as not working, I’d rather do it “just in case”.

My angle is that I’d prefer to stack everything I can in my favour, whether it is scientifically proven or just anecdotal. What I accept in doing that is that, to your point, I would never be sure what to attribute the effect to. This is not ideal but I’d opt for that over living with the notion that I might be missing out possible benefits because I wasn’t able to prove or disprove something.

Love the Massif Central, what a great area! Sunny, green, low population density, very reasonably priced property. It is missing hedgerows though :thinking: :laughing:. But if I ever relocate from the UK…

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There’s certainly merit to the optimise everything approach! I’m too wedded to the empirical method for my own good.

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I was planning on attending the 2020 French national exhibition on 23rd/24th of May.

My club is hosting :slight_smile: So we’ll definitely meet… beers/whisky/G&T and smoked meat at my place if you’re game :wink:

If I understood correctly he’s doing a talk at the exhibition that weekend.

Yes Michel will be doing a talk on Sunday afternoon on “The tree: its natural development, pruning and the defense mechanisms of the tree”. So expect a good refresher on the meristem and probably compartmentalisation.

Hervé Dora (the French guy with the surreal Chinese Elm at Noelanders) will also be there doing a demonstration on both Saturday and Sunday.

The program for the weekend as it stands.

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@Michael_P I’m game – will have to learn a bit more french :sweat_smile:.

The program looks great! Very organised weekend. Let’s hope things improve with the Coronavirus situation before then.

Worst case scenario, it will happen later :slight_smile:

Had some time to photograph trees again today, so here is my best field maple following its surface root cleaning:

Pretty happy with how the nebari is developing and excited for bud break later this week.

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Did anyone get to ask about this in a Q&A?. I’ve pinched out all the growing tips on my field maples this year. I don’t think in and of itself it’s been that successful. On the FM I particularly wanted success on I’ve still got massive single first internodes - approx 10cm when I wanted <1cm. Looking at my other FMs the extension has been mixed and the best guess I can make is the internode length is determined by the restriction of root mass i.e. the tree in the most restrictive pot had much tighter growth. The other alternative is going to simply be to cut of the whole of the first flush after leaves harden and regrow a second flush which should be much tighter.

Here is my experience thus far, though of course it will take a couple of years to see what difference it makes:
On the tree pictured above, I pinched out every terminal shoot and many of the interior shoots, leaving only the least vigorous branches.this was done just as the bud was opening as soon as the second pair of leaves was gripable, in many cases peeling back the largest leaf scales to do so. Where there was a smaller swollen bud directly behind a large one I even knocked out the larger and transitioned energy to the less vigorous.
The tree was top stripped of organic build up, but not repotted this year (it’s in the third year in the pot). The result mostly very short internodes, but long petioles and quite large leaves. The latter doesn’t concern me too much as I will be partially defoliating in a month or so anyway and as I increase ramification I should start getting smaller leaves (eventually).
A three weeks on from this I have applied a moderate fertilisation with organic pellets, once I partially defoliate I will begin supplemental liquid fertilizer too.
Hopefully I’ll get a second flush, which I will probably pinch too, depending on the vigour of the response.
Next year I shall repot and, provided health is good, I will repeat the process and see if there is a variation in response.

Some of the internodes 3 weeks after pinching:

An unpinched weak interior bud extended with long internodes:

Apical pinched growth on a tree earlier in development and repotted this year:

and on an unpinched sacrifice branch on that second tree…

Finally, as a bonus shot, my best field maple ‘virtually potted’ in the Peter Krebs pot I’ve acquired for it.

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@ Silva_Naturalis thanks for showing that the early pinch out method works. I wanted to comment that it seems to take field grown A. campestre a year or two to settle into container life and grow more than a node or two. The nodes are typical campestre length, but only one or two. Then they take off and want to put out 6, 8, 10 nodes which is when I need to prune for refinement. The other thing I have seen is that they will bud on old wood (at least 6-8 years old) once they get going.

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